With one bound I covered the distance between the rue du Mont-Blanc and the rue Pigale. I longed to tell Adolphe the realisation of all my hopes. I was now, at last, sure of remaining in Paris. A most ambitious career opened out before me, limitless and vast. God, on His side, had done all that was necessary: He had left me with Aladdin's lamp in the enchanted garden. The rest depended on myself. No man had ever, I believe, seen his wishes more completely satisfied, his hopes more entirely crowned. Napoleon could not have been prouder and happier than I on the day when, having espoused Marie-Louise, he repeated three times before nightfall, "My poor uncle Louis XVI.!" Adolphe entered very heartily into my delight. M. de Leuven, to be still characteristic, quietly ridiculed my raptures. Madame de Leuven, the most perfect of women, rejoiced in advance over the joy my mother would shortly experience. All three wanted to keep me to dinner with them; but I remembered that a diligence left at half-past four o'clock, and that by it I should be able to reach home by one in the morning. It was odd I should be as eager to return to Villers-Cotterets as I had been to come to Paris. True, I was not returning for long. I reached Villers-Cotterets at one o'clock. One thing marred my joy: everybody was asleep; no one was in the dark streets; I could not cry out from the door of the diligence, "Here I am! but only for three days; I am going back to Paris for good." Oh! what an incontestable reality had the fable of King Midas become to me! When I reached Cartier's house, I leapt from the coach to the ground without thinking of making use of the step. When on mother-earth I rushed off, shouting to Auguste-- "It is I, it is I, Auguste! Put my fare down to your father's account." In five minutes I was at home. I had a special way of my own of opening the door, after my nocturnal escapades; I turned it to account, and I entered my mother's room, who had hardly been an hour in bed, crying-- "Victory, dear mother, victory!" My poor mother sat up in bed in great agitation: such an early return and one so completely successful had never entered her head. She was obliged to believe my word when, after kissing her, she saw me dance round the room still shouting "Victory!" I told her the whole story: Jourdan and his lackeys, Sébastiani and his secretaries, Verdier and his pictures, the Duc de Bellune refusing to receive me and General Foy receiving me twice. And my mother made me repeat it over and over again; unable to believe that I, her poor child, had in three days, without support, without acquaintances, without influence, by my persistence and determination, myself changed the course of my destiny for ever.